This Awful Erasure
by ethnonyms
Summary: In the worlds between dreaming and waking, Lyra meets the one person who means more to her than anyone else—a beautiful, kind girl with crystal-blue eyes and a smile like the sea, who may or may not exist outside her own mind. Lyra/Kris; femmeslash.


Warm lap. Soft hands. Beauty incarnate. Devastating gentleness.

_I love you,_ Lyra thinks to herself deliriously. _I love you. I love you so much._

Fingers, stroking gently through her hair. Dreams of paradise. Crystal eyes.

_Please. Please, just once, please let me stay stay. _

_Can't you see that I love you?  
_

* * *

Whiteness. And softness. Maybe she's in heaven. Lyra doesn't care where (or what) this place is, only knows that this it is exactly where she wants to be for the rest of her existence.

It's a world perpetually ethereal and half-forgotten, once she leaves. There's the same sad pull in her chest, one that comes with certain dreams, those terribly wonderful ones that inevitably vanish upon awakening. The visions, wishful worlds she can never fully recover; not with diary entries, nor with long periods of silence and reflection. The girl holding Lyra on her legs like a _Pietà_ is much the same.

Lyra grips the fabric of the bicycle shorts pillowed beneath her head, almost tightly enough to hurt. Convincing herself, that the soft skin and shapely legs she touches are real. Because it wouldn't matter if they weren't.

Here, in this place that may or may not exist, Lyra would sell her soul to stay—forever and ever, and nowhere else. Anything, to be with _her_.

And where _is_ here? Lyra doesn't know. It's a little frightening, too, how very little she cares.

"Can I stay this time? Please?" Lyra whispers, so softly she's half-hoping the older girl won't hear it. Kris's rejection would hurt, far more than never knowing the answer to the question in her heart. But it's slowly killing her, not to ask. Lyra's been living sunup to sundown, perpetually in wait for the beautiful moment when she can lay her head down and not-quite-sleep to see her. The moment when she can be with Kris at last.

The fingers in Lyra's hair stop, and there's a change in the aura of the air: troubled, unhappy, and the younger girl feels her heart sink painfully in her chest with an ache that's nearly physical. Tears burn in the corners of her eyes, though her vision was already hazy from the ethereal quality of the half-world they've populated here and the lack of sleep it costs her. If Lyra blinks the tears away, she'll open her eyes to the sight of another world. The real world, even if it feels so hollow and false in comparison. She doesn't want to leave Kris's side just yet. So she lets herself openly cry instead, shame pooling in her stomach like poison.

The fingers in her hair begin to tremble. "Oh, Lyra," the voice murmurs above her head, so terribly, achingly kind.

Lyra reaches blindly for the other girl's free hand, curling slender fingers around her own in a way that would be possessive if Kris were a creature that could be truly grasped.

"Please," Lyra begs, reduced to this, a helpless little girl pleading for a nightlight to illuminate her dreams. "Please, let me stay. I don't want to go back."

"Lyra, oh, Lyra."

She doesn't want to go back. To the world where the colors are bright, lines sharp and defined, where people and pokémon exist in simple rounded shapes like children's puzzle pieces instead of the subdued watercolors with fading edges she so loves.

"Please let me stay."

Lyra.

"Please, don't go. Don't leave me."

Lyra.

"I don't want to be there, if you can't be with me!"

Lyra,

_( not Kris )_

Lyra

"Please—"

Lyra

Lyra

Lyra

_( because she's Lyra )_

"I just want—"

_( because this is not the world of Lyra )_

* * *

Lyra opens her eyes.

It's morning. Her chikorita woke her again. The pokémon stares at her with wide red eyes, brightly anticipatory, and full of questioning concern.

Lyra supposes she should feel guilt about the way she's been ignoring her pokémon emotionally for weeks, should feel _something._ However, there is nothing left in her heart anymore but emptiness.

_( all her passion wasted on a world that no longer exists )_

Reluctantly, she pushes the chikorita and aside pulls herself up from the ground with a yawn. She knows she needs to move quickly, to make it to the next town and challenge the Gym Leader. Unfortunately, she feels like it less and less with each passing day.

_( and no, Kris never wanted this )_

"Oh well," Lyra says tiredly. Her legs ache. She tries to rub away the bags under her eyes, without success.

_( but if Lyra can't have what she wants, then why should **she** )_

"Come on, Sārangī. I guess it's time to go."

_( why should anyone )_


End file.
